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Data-Intensive Research

Science is witnessing a data revolution. Data are now created by faster and cheaper physical technologies, software tools and digital collaborations. Examples of these include satellite networks, simulation models and social network data. To transform these data successfully into information then into knowledge and finally into wisdom, we need new forms of computational thinking. These may be enabled by building "instruments" that make data comprehensible for the "naked mind" in a similar fashion to the way in which telescopes reveal the universe to the naked eye. These new instruments must be grounded in well-founded principles to ensure they have the fidelity and capacity to transform the complex and large-scale data into comprehensive forms; this demands new data-intensive methods.

Data-intensive refers to huge volumes of data, complex patterns of data integration and analysis and intricate interactions between data and users. Current methods and tools are failing to address data-intensive challenges effectively: they fail for several reasons, all of which are aspects of scalability. I will introduce three main aspects of data-intensive research and show how we are addressing the challenges that arise from the interaction of these aspects. I will make use of results from our interdisciplinary collaborations as examples of solutions to specific challenges that can arise when scaling up intensity.